Web resources on famine

One difference between today and 1943 (the Great Bengal famine) or 1973 (the Ethiopian famine) is the availability of real-time information about conditions in famine areas. Citizens throughout the world have an unprecedented ability to be informed about the depth of crisis and human suffering that are associated with hunger.

Here are a few data sources that provide fairly detailed current information about malnutrition and starvation in the world.

ReliefWeb (maintained by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)

UNEP GRIDA (maintained by the United Nations Environment Programme)

Food Security Cambodia (Cambodia Food Security and Nutrition website)




(Famine in Niger)

Surely, of all the problems the world faces, widespread hunger and famine are among the worst. We need to put an end to hunger.

Causes of the food crisis

Today's New York Times has a good story on some of the background of the current food crisis (story). The basic point is fundamental: donor nations and international development institutions have substantially disinvested in the great agricultural research institutes that were founded in the sixties and seventies to provide a scientific basis for increasing food security. The story highlights the significant decline of institutions like the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines -- with disastrous consequences for the continual challenge of increasing agricultural productivity and -- usually -- rural incomes. (Click on the graphic to see a great set of graphs documenting investment, productivity, and rice stockpiles.)

There is a direct relationship between investment, scientific activity, and improvement in agricultural techniques, seed varieties, and new forms of pest control. If the world makes those investments, we have a good reason for confidence in the ability of the planet to keep food supply ahead of food demand. But if funding agencies and international institutions falter in their attention to the continuing struggle for agricultural progress -- as they most certainly seem to have done -- then food security will indeed be a center-stage issue for the coming decades.

Many commentators have also emphasized another crucial point: that hunger and poverty are directly connected. We've seen the impact that rising rice prices have on poor people in dozens of countries in the developing world -- essentially pushing poor people into ultra-poor crisis. But there is also a virtuous circle that economic development policy makers need to be striving for: increasing the incomes of the poor, leading to greater purchasing power, leading to rising demand for locally and nationally produced food, leading to increased incomes for rural poor people. Seen from this perspective, agricultural development has to be a top priority within economic development policy thinking.

The price of rice

The price of internationally traded rice has roughly doubled in the past several months. There are several independent factors that seem to be contributing causes for this sudden spike in prices (New York Times story, Toronto Globe and Mail story), but the bottom line is that this is very bad news for many developing countries in Asia and Africa. Poor people everywhere spend a high percentage of their income on food. If the price of the chief staple food rises abruptly, this will predictably cause suffering and hunger among the poor. Amartya Sen's penetrating ideas on issues of hunger and famine are as relevant today as they were two decades ago (The Political Economy of Hunger, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation). And, as Sen discovered, prices and incomes are critical determinants of malnutrition and famine. And recall that current estimates of the number of malnourished people in the world approach one billion!

Another important symptom of food distress for the world's poor -- the UN food program announced a few days ago that high prices have exhausted its budget (emergency appeal). It has called upon donor nations to provide immediate supplemental funds to permit it to continue its crucial programs.

This shift in international market conditions will also have the potential for creating civil unrest in several countries. There are already signs of urban unrest in the Philippines, where rice riots and disturbances have already occurred. The Times story cited above mentions food riots in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Governments that fail to assure the availability of affordable food supplies will be reminded of the volatility of the issue of food -- from medieval Europe to revolutionary France to Poland in the 1970s.

There seems to be a similar issue percolating in North America -- a sustained rise in the prices for wheat and maize over the past year. In this case the cause seems to be the increased demand for grain created by ethanol production on a large scale. Americans spend a smaller percent of income on food, so the immediate consequences are less damaging to population welfare. But this trend suggests a similar caution that we need to heed -- we need to pay attention to the stability and sustainability of the world's food system.

Food security is an important dimension of a developing country's long-term welfare and stability. These issues haven't gotten much attention in the international press in the past decade or so. Neo-liberal doctrines, market restructuring, and the Washington Consensus have pushed these more material aspects of economic development to a lower priority and visibility. But maybe current conditions will bring the issue back to center stage.